


Ghost Pilot

by Ladytalon



Category: Titanfall (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Back On My Bullsh!t, Blood and Injury, Buried Alive, Character Death Fix, Ficlet, Gen, Pain, Suffering, Temporary Amnesia, please read the tags before commenting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-11
Updated: 2020-01-11
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:41:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22205032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ladytalon/pseuds/Ladytalon
Summary: Captain Lastimosa wakes up to find that he’s been buried alive on Typhon.
Comments: 9
Kudos: 26





	Ghost Pilot

**Author's Note:**

> So, that syringe that Tai injects Jack with...it seems to be a cure-all. Are we really going to accept that DILF Central only had _one?_

Darkness all around, and a weight on his chest.

Weight _everywhere_.

Tai Lastimosa, captain in the Militia SRS, opens his eyes inside what he’ll eventually find is his own cairn. He vaguely remembers being inside his Titan and…what had happened? Had he been trapped inside something? Any memories he has seem to be out of focus and splintered beyond true recollection, beating against the confines of his aching skull like moths desperate to escape. His head isn’t the part of him that hurts the most, however – it feels as though a Titan has stepped on his midsection and tried its best to crush him.

He swallows with difficulty, feeling as though his mouth has been padded with cotton. Whatever has happened to him, his first priority is getting out of what could easily have become his grave. Tai forces himself to ignore the urge to gasp for air because whatever he’s buried beneath, he’s still breathing so that means that _some_ air is filtering down to him. _Stay calm, and go slow_ , he thinks. _Shallow, even breaths. You’ll get as much air as you want as soon as you’re out_. 

Moving his hands and feet in circles loosens them up enough for Tai to attempt lifting his arms, but it’s several minutes before he’s able to gain enough room to move. His eyes have adjusted to the feeble amount of light that’s filtered its way down to him, and he can see that he’s been covered by rocks. Some sort of landslide, probably. He begins to carefully displace the stones around his head first, moving slowly so that he can gain a larger area of freedom without having the remaining rocks collapse atop his face.

After what seems like hours, he’s cleared enough space for him to start pulling his body up closer to the surface. Tai still feels as though he’s been beaten with a bag of arc grenade casings, but the thought of finally getting _out_ provides a burst of adrenaline that helps push the pain away. He gets back to work, grimly determined that he’ll be out in less than an hour, and silently begins a count to help keep himself motivated. 

His hand breaks through close to the forty-five minute mark, and he finally gives into the impulse to start clawing at the rocks covering him. The frenzied movement causes pain to radiate from his chest into his limbs and Tai stops to catch his breath. _Slow_ , he reminds himself. _Easy. You’re almost out_. He’s never considered himself to be claustrophobic, but that’s clearly in need of review. 

Tai works his other hand free, and then it’s a matter of seconds before he’s able to uncover his face. He squints through dirt-encrusted lashes at his surroundings, but he doesn’t recognize any of it – trees, and a sheer cliff – in the gathering darkness. Now that he’s exposed and very, very helpless, Tai is increasingly aware of the fact that any natural predators will find him easy pickings if he doesn’t get out of there.

It’s easier to free the rest of his body now that his torso has been uncovered. He drags himself from the rock pile and staggers away from it, nearly taking a painful tumble when one of the legs of his jumpsuit is snagged on some sort of root. His boots have disappeared somehow, possibly still hidden under the rocks he’d just freed himself from, but his jumpkit is missing as well…and it’s extremely unlikely that he’d left _that_ behind. Tai’s legs feel too weak to carry him for much longer, but he needs to find a safe place to rest before night comes and his bladder feels as though it hasn’t been emptied in at least a week.

One of his pressing needs is taken care of immediately, even as he winces from the startling pain of doing so, and Tai forces himself to walk towards the nearest tree. His vision is blurred and the tremors of exhaustion are starting to tense already strained muscles, but if he doesn’t get himself up into the trees high enough then it could be an automatic death sentence. The fading light is turning the clearing shades of gold that he’d ordinarily appreciate, but he’s beyond admiring anything but a safe place to spend the night. He falls into an uneasy sleep, punctuated by strange dreams and flickers of memory that hasn’t been repossessed yet, as soon as he finds a likely spot.

Tai wakes early, shivering in the half-light, to hear the whirring of a drone…and the echoing voice of a man he used to know. He listens to Matthias Marder promising safe passage to any Militia troops still on the surface, and wonders if anyone has actually believed the outrageous lie.

His head is pounding and the rest of his body still feels as though a Blackbird’s been parking on it, but Tai’s general misery has lessened slightly thanks to a night’s rest. He’s not sure how he could have ever stayed asleep with it being so cold and his boots being MIA, but supposes that he’d been too tired to care.

With morning comes a larger amount of recollection as he scans his surroundings and sees a massive chunk of the MCS _James MacAllen_ resting on an outcropping. “Ah, hell.”

Tai carefully works himself down from the tree, frowning at the memories flickering through his mind. They’d been near Typhon when the IMC warships had begun to target them, and he’d been…what had he been doing? _Cooper,_ he thinks. Yes, he’d been shepherding Rifleman Cooper in one of the VR pods when the first blows had been exchanged. Anderson stopped to greet him on the way to a drop pod, and Tai had boarded his Titan.

He can remember fighting off a few of the Apex Predators, stopping to pull one of the needles from his medkit because Cooper was in need of help. BT warning him of another wave inbound.

Tai leans against the tree, fighting off another wave of dizziness at the memory of the pulse rounds ripping through BT’s cockpit. He has a vague recollection of using the remaining syringe despite knowing that it would be a miracle if his injuries weren’t fatal, and then…nothing. Had he transferred control over BT to Cooper? It would certainly explain the fact that his kit is missing.

What a fucking mess.

The one thing it seems Cooper hasn’t looted is his grappling hook, probably because Tai hadn’t gotten around to training him with it yet. Given the state of his insides, it’s a good thing he still has possession of it if he’s going to make it up there to the Mac. No way of knowing which sections remain intact or if IMC vultures have already picked it clean, but Tai hopes there’ll be a few more syringes stashed where he can find them. He’s never had to use them to combat internal hemorrhaging before, so this should be fun.

Tai rubs at his temples as he looks around the clearing, taking in the dark stains on the rock that speaks of a man being crushed to pulp beneath a Titan’s foot, and bullet holes scattered on rock and tree alike. More dried blood on foliage where Prowlers tugged their meals through to finish later. His eyes return to the running water and he walks towards it using a modified stride that doesn’t tug at his abused insides. Tai is forced to move upstream several times before he finds a place that isn’t tainted by a decomposing body – human _or_ animal – and carefully lowers himself down so that he can drink through cupped hands. After he drinks his fill, he splashes more of the cold water on his face and neck until he feels reasonably refreshed and slightly cleaner.

He lifts his head up to the jagged chunk of _MacAllen_ , offering up a silent prayer that he finds a decent pair of boots as well as pain relief. It’s time to get going.

Without a helmet to map his way or a jumpkit to experiment with, it’s bound to be slow going. Tai settles into a pace that doesn’t strain his injuries too badly, constantly scanning the terrain for a clue about the best path up. He’s forced to duck beneath foliage a few times when one of the drones comes too close, but Tai soon notices signs that a Pilot had come this way – and if he’s not mistaken, he’s following Cooper’s trail. 

He sighs inwardly at realizing that he could have simply scouted for BT’s footprints and followed those, as a Titan’s prints are extremely hard to disguise, but then realizes that BT had also been damaged in the attack. The Vanguard Titan certainly would have directed Cooper to find a new battery or two, and the likeliest place to scavenge would be Tai’s current destination. Cooper might have looted the med supplies, too, but Tai’s hoping that he’d limited his scrounging to the battery racks.

Forced to backtrack at least three times due to sheer cliffs that he can’t navigate without help he doesn’t have, Tai finally makes it up to the wreckage. He counts four bodies – IMC grunts – and some shrapnel that used to be a drone…and he’s in luck, because the Prowlers haven’t found the corpses yet. Tai limps forward, pressing his hands against his aching torso, and finds the grunt who seems to be nearest to his size. He can’t count on the body still being there after he searches the ship, so he grabs it by the legs and pulls it inside. 

Slowly, of course, because he feels weaker than ever. Hopefully there are rations _somewhere_ around and he won’t need to resort to emptying out the pockets of those that aren’t alive to mind…it’s bad enough that he’ll be stealing the boots off of one of them. 

As Tai makes his way inside, he can hear his commander’s voice still ringing out on the ship’s announcement system. Hopefully Briggs is somewhere safe. He pauses to listen to her last message before shaking his head and continuing his search for medical supplies. The decks are a mess and it’s difficult to recognize his surroundings in their current state. He finally locates a battered first aid kit after hauling himself up and over the jagged metal separating two decks.

His hands are trembling as he struggles to open the kit, and he almost drops the syringes that have come untucked from the elastic loops. Tai uses his teeth to tug the cap off of one syringe and fumbles with the zipper of his jumpsuit, feeling at the tender skin of his abdomen. The skin feels hot and tight with the recurrence of internal bleeding, so he picks the closest spot that doesn’t hurt as badly and inserts the needle there. Almost immediately, a wave of dizziness hits him and the remaining syringe falls to the deck plating. “No…not yet,” Tai grunts, reaching down to retrieve the medicine. He should have had enough time to find a better place of concealment before the syringe’s contents began to act, but he’d obviously more grievously injured than he’d first thought.

He can’t trust that he won’t drop the other syringe again, possibly shattering it, so he uses the last of his strength to inject himself with that one as well. Tai kneels down and sweeps some of the debris from the deck before he stretches out carefully, feeling his limbs growing heavy with the onset of the medically-induced coma. As the darkness swallows him, all he can do is pray that he wakes up again….one more time.


End file.
